10 Nov 2006
Indiana Chamber Disappointed With Election Results

Poor babies. After their support for the toll road sell off and the imposition of daylight savings time they should be glad that there are any "pro-business legislators" (that is, toadies who slavishly follow the lobbyist money rather than the interests and views of their own constituents) left. I must say that I'm particularly gratified by the loss of Troy "I'll Never Vote for Daylight Time" Woodruff, who ended up casting the deciding vote in favor of it's passage in the Indiana House.

Despite what the pundits pontificate, voters do remember. And we act on those memories.

Indiana Chamber of Commerce President Kevin Brinegar says the state's largest business organization is disappointed that it lost four strongly pro-business legislators in the Indiana House.

(link) [Inside Indiana Business]

Update:Even the former Republican Speaker of the Indiana House recognizes that DST cost them the election.

09:51 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

29 Oct 2006
Surplus Daylight
Backwards ClockWell, the rest of the State has "fallen back", so their clocks are now in sync with mine. It might be my imagination, but I seem to have noticed a decided upswing in bitching by even national commentators this year, with The Onion even running a sarcastic blurb on the "national daylight surplus".

Closer to home, even more folks are noticing the absurdity of it all. We're all Losing Track of Time. Maybe it's because we really don't have representative government in Indiana: according to this article from the Ft. Wayne News-Sentinel:

The statewide adoption of daylight-saving time was opposed by 49 percent, with 44 percent supporting it. Seven percent were not sure. Republicans supported daylight time 47 percent to 45 percent, while Democrats opposed it 53 percent to 41 percent. Of independents, 51 percent opposed it while 43 percent supported it.

Democrats are playing on voter anger over this to good effect, and it will undoubtedly cost a bit of a Republican player in the Indiana House his seat.

Between this and selling off the toll road, it's going to be a tough sell for the Republicans to retain control. And that, in the end, will be a very good thing here.

Update: Here's a really bizarre proposal for a single time zone US...

12:48 /Politics | 1 comment | permanent link

16 Aug 2006
Time to Grow a Brain

Backwards Clock Oh, gimme a break! Here's some news and no mistake: there is no more daylight on any given day than there ever has been. Changing clocks did not reset the Sun or the rotation of the earth...

I'm in Boone County, now officially on EDT. I'm also a poultry producer, and can assure you that my flock still rises at dawn and roosts at sunset - same thing they did last year. Or the year before that. Moving a mechanical hand on a wall clock, or adding bits to a digital alarm, does nothing but that: it moves the hands or the counters in a clock. Nature cheerfully ignores clocks.

I despise DST and I wish we'd never made the switch. I deal with it by simply not changing the clock: I'm perfectly capable of adding 1 hour to the time shown on my pocket watch for appointments, etc. I keep the same schedule personally that I've always kept: it hasn't bothered me a bit, except for the fact that ice cream shops now close at 8 pm when there's still an hour and a half of daylight left. It'd bother me a lot more if I had to show up at work earlier - but then hey, I get up with the chickens these days anyway!

A better illustration of why folks want to be on Central Daylight Time (or no daylight time at all) is simple: tonight's sunset here will occur at 8:43 PM EDT, with nautical twilight (when the chickens roost) at 9:47 PM EDT. In New York those same numbers are 7:53 PM EDT and 8:57 PM EDT - a difference of fifty minutes. In Chicago actual sunset is at 7:51 PM CDT, and nautical twilight at 8:58 PM CDT. Subtracting an hour from those figures to account for the difference between central and eastern time zones give virtually no difference whatsoever.

In fact, Indianapolis has the latest by the clock sunset of nearly any major American city, except Louisville, KY. In Los Angles, sunset is at 7:40 PM PDT, in Denver it's at 7:56 PM MDT and in Atlanta it's 8:24 PM EDT.

Arguing that changing clocks makes daylight magically appear or disappear does the opposition to DST no good whatsoever - the whole scheme is insane, and should be repealed, but the fact remains that changing clocks doesn't extend days or shrink nights. It just changes clocks, and because of our geographic position and "choice" of time zones makes everything an hour later than it should be here. Argue that, and there's a chance we'll regain our senses.

The longer days during the summer heat brought on by Eastern Daylight Time could have a significant negative impact on the health of Dubois County’s poultry producers and also the health of the poultry flocks...

(Dubois County Petition to the USDOT)

via Masson's Blog

00:22 /Politics | 2 comments | permanent link

09 May 2006
'Happy Hour' Ends at Indy 500 Practice

It seems strange to post a sports story in the 'Politics' category, but here's an effect of Indiana going on DST I'll bet nobody in the Governor's office thought of before they pushed it so hard ... not to suggest that our politicians think much before pushing anything.

Racing is huge here, not just in tourism, but also as a native industry. And if DST slows down the speeds for the races, well, that's one more strike against it in the minds of Hoosiers.

AP - Goodbye, Happy Hour. Normally, the final hour of Indianapolis 500 practice each day is the busiest time on the track. With the sun beginning to fall behind the towering grandstands along the front straightaway, the track cooled slightly — and produced significantly faster speeds.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

15:24 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

03 Apr 2006
Why I'm Opposed to Daylight Savings Time in Indiana

Look out! Here comes Dave Quixote, tilting at another windmill! Why is the idiot doing this, ignoring so simple a thing as a setting on a clock?

Observant readers will note a new graphic in the left hand column here, replacing the logo for StandardTime.com but maintaining the link. It shows the time the page was loaded in Eastern Standard Time - and I must confess it was quite interesting to get it working both locally and on the server (which is in San Diego, incidentally) and ignoring the now near ubiquitous DST. But I managed. None of the computer clocks here at Hammerstead have been reset, nor will they be. I've set up my own time server for this purpose - if you're intereted leave a writeback or drop me an email and I'll open it up.

What could compliance with this possibly hurt, and why will defiance help? Why don't I just shut up, or at least stop my grousing and get on with it? After all, when I've lived in other states I managed to change the clocks and get on with it, despite the unnatural interruption of sleep and the feeling for an entire season that my biological clocks had not quite been reset as easily as my digital ones.

Compliance would certainly help me keep appointments - not that I have that many. And, in point of fact, the wall clocks here probably will be set to DST - and the satellite already has done so automatically. Just my personal pocket watch, the computers and my coffee maker will stay standard along with my personal schedule.

Defiance, even to the limited degree I plan, will cause me some headaches. The possibility that I'll forget and miss an appointment, or get to the post office too late to mail an important document.

But defiance also adds one very important psychological dimension: it's a way of personally shouting out to the (Hoosier) world a simple statement, breathtaking in it's simplicity. And that statement is: Non serviam. I will not serve the State. The State is not divine in any sense, and they no longer have any claim on my loyalty or for my conformance. This is a quintessential act of passive revolt: they have crossed an invisible line, and lost the nominal cooperation of one man (me) who is finally outraged enough to say "No!".

The way in which the current Republican administration went about this is the real problem. Every poll showed Hoosiers either opposed to DST entirely or favoring a statewide move to Central Time. This was not only ignored by the Daniels Administration, it was openly mocked, as though those of us opposed to such a "progressive" measure were nothing but rude and uncultured hicks who were opposed to any sort of "progress". Insulting the people of the Hoosier State was the order of the day...

And when the vote came down to it, the arm twisting was nothing short of unbelievable: my State Representative, Mr. Jeff Thompson, a man I've always respected (even if he is still a Republican), admitted to me in a phone call that he voted for the measure, even though we, the voters in his district, were massively opposed to it. He did this simply to spare a representative from an "unsafe" Republican seat in northern Indiana from having to vote for it. In short, representative democracy fell on the sword of politics, and holding power was more important than expressing the views of his constituents. "Respect" is no longer a word I use when discussing elected officials at any level.

In a very real sense, the daylight savings time debate in Indiana last year and this, has pushed me back to my political roots in left libertarian anarchism: I no longer believe that the State can be reformed in any meaningful sense. We are slaving under the yoke of a bunch of megalomaniacs , and the yoke needs to be removed, not simply repositioned.

Thanks to changes the Bush Administration made to Federal tax and immigration policy, our programming jobs were shipped to India in 2002 and 2003. That same "small and limited government" Administration is attempting to put the farm out of business with it's onerous NAIS regulations. And now they want me to set my clocks ahead and back to "save daylight" - an absurdity on it's face, but a small thing as these things go.

But it's also the one thing that I can seize some control over - it's one area where I can defy the politicians seemingly limitless appetite for power. And I can do so with little physical risk, as they've neglected to make it a criminal offense to fail to move your clocks.

Perhaps it is just a pebble - but landslides that move mountains oft start with a single small stone. So: No! I will not serve! And by the way, fuck you, Mitch!

PS: I won't be driving the toll road, either. And for exactly the same reasons.

23:00 /Politics | 3 comments | permanent link

11 Mar 2006
Time switch creating computer nightmare

Backwards ClockYou know, this really deserves to be in large, bold letters:

TOLD YA SO!

And you can bet I'll keep you posted on the chaos ...

For the record, Hammerstead Farms will not be observing "Daylight Savings Time" - if you make an appointment to come out, plan on arriving on the standard time, and not some made up hour. If you're in doubt, try looking at the sun. You might learn something that our esteemed politicos in Indy are apparently ignorant of: you cannot change the time by passing a law. To trot out my favorite quote for situations like this: "You can put a shoe in the oven but that doesn't make it a biscuit!" (Malcolm X).

If you have an important meeting starting April 2, beware of relying on your computer for a reminder--there's a fair chance you'll be late. The state's first-ever switch to daylight-saving time will leave thousands of computers confused about what time it is, and their users not much better off.

(link) [Indiana Business Journal]

via Masson's Blog

00:00 /Politics | 1 comment | permanent link

19 Jan 2006
Indiana counties to go back in time

Backwards ClockActually, it's just begun. We've not switched time yet - that won't happen until just after the primary election here in April. And we'll switch back just before the generals in November.

There are a dozen bills in the legislature this session that seek to modify/reverse this idiocy. There's a movement afoot locally to just ignore DST and stay on standard time: government offices and banks can't follow it, but lot's of other folks will be.

I predict that by the next gubernatorial election, most of the state will be back on Eastern Standard Time, where it belongs. And if not by then, at some point we'll go back to it, and breathe a collective sigh of relief.

The federal government Wednesday granted the requests of eight Indiana counties to switch from the Eastern to the Central time zone, ending a long battle involving daylight-saving time.

(link) [CNN.com]

00:00 /Politics | 3 comments | permanent link

30 Nov 2005
More Time for Madness

Am I springing forward or falling back? I don't really know, but I guess I'm not the only Hoosier bemused and incredulated (is that a word? it is now ...) by the obsession with time of Our Man Mitch. Masson's Blog points out today that the good Guv is in technical violation of the new DST law, and his rant from the 28th excoriating a recent Indianapolis Star editorial on the time change was nothing short of brilliant. Preach it, brother!

00:00 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

29 Oct 2005
Mainers Embrace Daylight Time Extension

I've discussed the advent of Daylight Savings Time here quite a bit in the past year, and I'm glad to report that we're not the only place with a time problem.

It's geography versus politics and economics: geographically, Maine needs to be on Atlantic Time, with no DST, year around, but network TV and a desire for economic coordination with the rest of New England have it stuck on Eastern Standard time, with a resulting early sunset.

We're in the reverse situation: when this change takes effect here, it won't get light until after folks have arrived at work and had their first coffee break! But, like like their collegues in Maine, Hoosier politicians have more important things to consider than simple geography: why, how can we keep jobs if we aren't on the same time as New York, all the time? Never mind that sleepy folks with their circadian rhythms seriously disturbed are less productive and more accident prone! The political solution is to disturb these biological rhythms twice a year, so that just as you begin to adapt to one time period, you get to switch to another!

Of course, the Feds have thrown a real ringer this week: they want to split up two adjacent counties in northern Indiana into different time zones. Which has Our Man Mitch in a tizzy, to say the least.

If jobs are the main concern, perhaps we should just switch to Bangalore time, since that's where a great many hi tech jobs seem to be heading. Alternately, we could pay a bit of attention to longitude and latitude and set our clocks to match the position of the sun ... what a concept!

AP - John Rossignol says: Let there be light. Who can blame him? The winter sun goes down earlier in the day in his northern Maine hometown of Van Buren than anywhere else in the continental United States.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

00:00 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

07 Aug 2005
Daylight-Saving Switch May Cause Tech Woes (AP)

Personally, I plan on ignoring DST when it comes to Indiana next year. It will be interesting to see how many of my neighbors are late for work that first weekend, and how jammed the tech support lines become. And when you add in the national chaos caused by this ill-considered piece of legislation, well, it'll be interesting, to say the least.

AP - When daylight-saving time starts earlier than usual in the United States come 2007, your VCR or DVD recorder could start recording shows an hour late.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

00:00 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

27 Jul 2005
Spring Forward, Cut Back?

Congress passed the bill, and we're going to find out how much energy daylight savings time really saves. I suspect it won't be much, if any at all. In fact, some of the original proponents of DST were the oil companies, on the premise that longer daylight meant that folks would be out driving more rather than sitting at home in front of the boob tube. That should save some oil imports, eh?

Congress is on the verge of passing a new energy bill this week that would make daylight-saving time last from mid-March to early November. (It now runs from April through October.) The sponsors of the daylight amendment say it will save the country at least $180 million in energy costs. Why does resetting your clock save oil?

(link) [Slate]

via MyAppleMenu

00:00 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

29 Apr 2005
Indiana passes daylight-saving time bill

Well, we've got it now - despite earlier defeats, and by a very close margin, the Indiana House passed a Daylight Saving Time bill last night, moving us on the "spring forward, fall back" schedule starting next year.

But exactly when we'll be changing our clocks is still a bit of a mystery. You see, Congress is considering an energy bill that would extend DST to run from March to November. And I must say, that for purely local political reasons, I hope they pass it! Why?

It's well known to my readers that I consider myself a conservative kinda guy, and have, in the past, supported Republicans, mainly on the basis of fiscal responsibility and a perceived lack of willingness on their part to "change for the sake of change".

But what with the advent of the Religious Right, and the increasing willingness of the party to kow-tow to large business interests (the House also passed a new tax bill that increases taxes on me, in Boone County, to build a new stadium for the multi-millionaire owner of the Colts in Marion County ... go figure) I have become disaffected with the Republicans - I have been labeled a "RINO" (Republican in Name Only) due to this disaffection, and have resolved to rid myself of that label - if the Republicans don't want me, perhaps the Democrats do.

Anyway, because this idiotic measure was pushed by Republicans, if Congress extends DST, and Indiana remains in the Eastern time zone, sunrise in Indiana on Election Day in 2006 will occur at 8:20 am. And I believe that most voters will be totally pissed off by leaving their kids standing at the bus stop in the dark, voting in the dark on their way to work, and then getting on the job and it still being dark. They'll remember the reason we abandoned DST some forty years ago. And the morons that voted to do this to their constituents are about to discover it...

When 47 states move their clocks forward an hour next April to observe daylight-saving time, all of Indiana is expected to join them for the first time in decades.

(link) [CNN]

00:00 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

07 Apr 2005
Not Just Indiana

I have followed with a sense of incredulous amusement the absolute fixation of the new Indiana government on daylight savings time - some of these guys are more obsessed with passing it than this old curmudgeon is obsessed with stopping it. It's gotten to the point that these people are ceasing work on infrastructure improvements, taxation, public works and nearly everything else in an attempt to ram DST down the throats of a Hoosier public that either doesn't want it or couldn't care less one way or another. And I can't for the life of me figure out why.

Few local links here (as the Indianapolis Star archives go offline after a few days) but the short story is that the bill to institute this nutty scheme was first passed, then died getting out of the House when the Democrats "pulled a Texas" and left the building, not allowing the chamber to gain a quorum. The bill was resurrected (over much more substantial and to my mind, important, legislation) and rammed through the House again - only to be amended in a fashion that it's supporters find impossible to accept - it would allow individual counties to opt out! So that's now in a conference committee, and faces a threatened court challenge!

But time stupidity is not just the province of the Indiana Legislature - apparently it's infected Congress as well.

Congress also is debating daylight-saving time. Wednesday, a U.S. House committee adopted an amendment by Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., that would extend daylight-saving time by two months...

"Extending daylight-saving time makes sense, especially with skyrocketing energy costs," Upton said. "The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use. It is that simple."

In that case, Rep. Upton, why don't we just move our clocks ahead by 12 hours and eliminate darkness entirely? Think of the energy savings!

The latest twist in the daylight-saving time saga calls for the House to vote today on the bill and let the Senate -- if the measure makes it that far -- deal with a provision that is illegal.

(link) [Indianapolis Star]

Update: Apparently I'm not the only paleo-conservative out there who thinks DST is a stupid ritual, with "the malodorous whiff of industrial policy". Lot's of good history in this article, too.

00:00 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

Saving Daylight

Indiana is once again immersed in the Hoosier Great Debate: should we adopt Daylight Savings Time or not.

Our new Governor is quite a bug on the subject - he contends that by moving the hands of our clocks around we'll encourage economic development and all sorts of good things will just drop from the sky for us. I think he's full of this: but what I really object to is the entire notion that we're "saving" anything. It's just specious - a completely fallacious argument.

Daylight savings time is like cutting six inches off the end of your bedsheet and sewing it to the head, and then claiming the sheet is longer! You're not saving squat: you're moving an artificial "time window" around the day. My livestock don't schedule their days according to a clock: they go by sunrise and sundown, getting more active in the summer and less in the winter. It's a natural cycle. Humans have a natural rhythm too, and when we go monkeying around with natural cycles, all sorts of unintended consequences can result.

I was quite amused to find this site: it points out many of the fallacies proposed by DST proponents as to power consumption, accident reduction, etc., etc. Listening to some of the moonbats testifying for it's adoption in legislative hearings this year you'd think that merely adopting daylight savings time would cure all of the the worlds ills. One lady even said she was all for it because it would shorten the three hour drive from Indianapolis to Evansville to two hours! Personally, I think this shows we need to spend some more money on education!

I'm quite proud of Indiana for refusing to go along with this nutty scheme to "save" light, and I can only hope that the Legislature, in it's infinite wisdom, remains set against it.

00:00 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

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